Archive for the ‘Warhammer Online’ Category

Six weeks ago I tried out the beta version of the Warhammer Online client for the Mac. You can read about my trials downloading the client and experience with the beta in this posting. In this post I indicated that I would be sticking with the PC version as the performance on my 2.93GHz MacBook Pro was not all that great.

Today I downloaded the released version of the Mac client to try it out and am happy to report that I encountered no download problems and the performance is much better. I would even consider playing the game on the MacBook Pro if I found myself without my regular gaming machine.

If you are playing on the new MacBook Pro with the discreet video card, don’t forget to enable the High Performance graphics option in the Energy Saver preferences. Failure to do this will result in the game being virtually unplayable. You will likely find that doing this causes your MacBook Pro fans to come on and stay on for the duration of your gameplay. The temperature of the aluminum body will heat up to where the keys may become too hot to touch. These problems can be annoying but are no fault of the game, rather due to the enabling of the discreet graphics card.

Setting the in-game video quality to Fastest Frame rate resulted in a very enjoyable playing experience and the scenery looks great.

All in all, I think this is a great start and a welcome addition to the Mac platform. Hopefully, more publishers will publish their games on the Mac. And while a native version would offer even greater performance, the Cider Portability Engine from TransGaming used in the Warhammer Online Mac Client shows that even emulating can offer acceptable performance.

Check it out for yourself and download the new Mac Client.